A man of his time
I enjoyed reading Lucy Worsley’s article about Abraham Lincoln and even learned from it. I did not know the sad story of Jefferson C Davis and Ebeneezer Creek, surely a war crime. However, I must write in defence of Lincoln, who was a man of his time, believing in the myth of race that still deceives so many people today. He saw that what had been done to African-Americans was criminal, and he believed sending them ‘ back’ might atone for it, not realising that they were as American as he was.
His great concern was the preservation of the union, for which he was willing to give all (and indeed he did give all, including his son, his wife’s sanity and his own life). And he did it with courage, grace and humour, to ensure that, to quote the Gettysburg address: “This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Mary Karen Solomon, Colorado
Misremembered history
It may seem a trivial matter, but perhaps a history magazine should not be perpetuating popular myths. I refer to Social Media on page 19 of the Christmas edition and the statement: “If not for her [Marie Curie’s] work we wouldn’t have X-rays, etc.”
Marie Curie did not discover X-rays. While she did build and operate mobile X-ray units in the First World War, the techniques were already well established. Why this idea, that Marie Curie brought us X-rays perpetuates, is beyond me. She should be remembered for her fantastic researches into radioactivity instead. Jim McKnight, Altrincham
Northern compromise
In his Was it Worth it? (November) Professor Richard Evans writes that Scandinavia fell to an authoritarian form of social democracy. It is unclear what he means by this. In all the three Scandinavian countries, and in Finland in 1938, there was compromise that saved parliamentary democracy.
The labour movements, having discarded Leninism and revolutionary romanticism, formed an alliance with the farmers’ unions, which provided the basis for democratic government. This closed the political space available to fascism. Nazi and fascist movements became marginal phenomena: 2 per cent of the vote in Norway, 0.8 per cent in Sweden. Only in Finland was fascism a threat (the IKL party got 8 per cent in 1938). To say that social democracy was authoritarian is simply not true. Bernt Hagtvet, professor emeritus of political science, University of Oslo, Norway
What if?…
With the 100th anniversary of the armistice of the First World War, it is timely to consider whether the war was worth the gain for Britain and its empire. More than a million British and imperial soldiers died, and a million and a half were seriously injured.
Suppose Britain had not gone to war: these lives and injuries would have been spared. It is likely Germany and its allies would have been the final victors. The course of the Russian revolution would have been altered, Hitler would not have come to power, and there may not have been a Second World War. France would have lost territory, as it did 50 years earlier in the Franco-Prussian War, including some of its empire. Note, though, that the occupation in that war was short. Of course, it is impossible to lay out what other course history might have taken, but the First World War was certainly not ‘the war to end war’. Derek Smith, Forest Gate
Misquote irritation
Christine Johnston is not alone ( Letters, Christmas). The title misquote on Peter Jackson’s otherwise fine production They Shall Not Grow Old stood out like a sweaty thumbprint on the Mona Lisa. It makes no difference whether the mistake was deliberate or accidental. The producers should apologise forthwith and with appropriate humility. Hugh Rogers, Lincolnshire
A sin of omission?
Unlike Frances O’Grady, I cannot find that Paul Robeson ever “acknowledged the truth about Stalin” ( My History Hero, November). What I have found is that after Khrushchev’s 1956 speech denouncing some of Stalin’s crimes, Robeson went silent about Stalin while continuing to support the Soviet Union, even though the country continued to commit many similar crimes to those of the Stalin era. Going silent is far from “acknowledging the truth about Stalin”.
Paul Robeson seemed to have been morally and ethically blind to reality. He believed in, supported and advocated an ideology that, in its implementation in the Soviet Union, equalled the Nazis in its crimes against humanity. He was also able to reconcile himself to the two-year Soviet military alliance with the worst white supremacists in history. During and because of that alliance, the Nazis were able to capture most of the victims of the Holocaust, place them beyond the reach of military rescue and begin to exterminate them.
I find little to admire in people who saw the Stalinist form of communism as a path to human freedom and liberation. At best, the legacy of people such as Paul Robeson is profoundly tragic. Leonard H Cizewski, Wisconsin
Corrections
In the Christmas issue’s News pages we described a potential new date for the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 as being “two months earlier than previously thought”. In fact, as reader Hugh Hollinghurst points out, it is actually two months later than the traditional date of 24 August.
The map included in the article From Traders to Invaders (Christmas) included both Londinium and Corinium in England. As reader Caroline Elliott has noted, these names did not exist prior to the Roman conquest of Britain in AD 43 and should not have featured on the map.